Sep 5, 2022
Like an all-you-can eat buffet of yuri, Ano Ko ni Kiss to Shirayuri wo's greatest strength is also its weakness, as its huge cast of charming characters and wide variety of relationships don't provide enough space for more than one of its storylines to stretch its legs.
Canno's art is always cute and her moment-to-moment writing is effective. Initially the characters can be difficult to keep track of as the narrative jumps from pairing to pairing - you'll have to pay close attention to each girl's specific combination of hairstyle and hair accessory to keep them straight (so to speak). But the storylines are so densely
...
woven together that once you get the hang of the cast you'll be able to find delightful little details and connections littered throughout the manga.
The main pairing, between two academic rivals at the top of their class, is one of the better ones, probably because it's actually given the time and pages it needs to chart each girl's emotional development. It showcases Canno's main strength in writing, which is giving her characters very distinct personalities with clear strengths and flaws. There are no bland self-insert characters in AnoKiss, and each character's feelings are taken seriously. Most of the relationships in the manga are shown to be growing and evolving as the series progresses and the characters near adulthood.
My personal favourite stories include the vicious love triangle that turns into a happy polyamorous trio, and the girl who has to figure out why her new underclassman seems to secretly despise her. I was less interested in the track team duo, and didn't particularly care for the incest-y one. There's also a story featuring two rivals for the school council elections that feels a little bit like a repeat of the main pairing.
Overall I'd recommend this for fans of the genre. In particular, if you're just getting into yuri manga I'd recommend it as a way to find out what dynamics you're most interested in, since it covers a lot of different archetypes.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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